Breakfast was a quick ordeal. Evelyn wasn't exactly in a hurry, but she didn't want to waste time, so she quickly uttered the words she knew by heart but couldn't understand, and gulped down all the food her goddess gave her. The priests she was about to visit wouldn't approve of her wasting time on a potentially important matter, but if it turned out to be serious, she might have to spend the rest of the day with the priests and whatever guild they might hire.
Once Evelyn had a full stomach, she gave another prayer to Valeria, before she headed to the edge of the city. The temples were bizarre structures. Each one was built so that half of it was outside the city wall and half inside, with each side having specific areas inside or outside the city. The priests and clerics of Valeria were people who had devoted their entire lives to the higher being. The priests would follow a specific routine each and every day in worship of the goddess, which included some really bizarre actions. But in return of their poor health, letting the goddess do with their bodies how she wished, and weeks at a time spent even attempting to speak with Valeria, the priests made the entire city flourish. They sacrificed their entire lifetimes so that the goddess would recognize her citizens and clerics, so that she could answer their prayers. With the priest's sacrifice and worship, every citizen could get food and simple clothing from the goddess, while a cleric could have an entire street built within a day, or repel enemy invasions and in general, keep everyone safe.
It was one such cleric who was standing next to the temple entrance, attending to the long line of people waiting to get their more complex prayers answered. If someone broke a family heirloom, even their entire house, or almost anything really, they could just go to a cleric and ask them to fix it. Unfortunately the thing they fixed was almost never exactly the same as it was before, which was why most people didn't ask clerics to raise the dead.
"Next", the cleric said, bringing Evelyn out of her thoughts. "I said next", the cleric said again, with a slight higher volume, as Evelyn realized that she was next in line. "Good morning, how may Valeria bless you?" The cleric asked in a bored tone once Evelyn stepped forward.
"Um... So I think I found an evil spirit next to the road between my village and here. It's only a mile away, and I'm pretty sure it's smart." Evelyn spoke confidently. Or at least Evelyn was pretty sure she did, since she had mentally practiced what she'd say while waiting in line.
"That is concerning. Do you have any proof of this?" The cleric asked. Evelyn nodded, lifting up the dead crow with one hand, and the needle shot at her with the other. "Alright, go through the third door on the right, and tell priest Thomas what you told me... Next."
Evelyn stood stunned, she hadn't expected to be dismissed so quickly, but after a moment she followed the orders. The room she was told to enter was a simple workshop, filled with stacks of books and shelves covered in piles of parchment. In the center of the room, with a window behind it, there was a wide desk, with a balding man dressed in the green robes of a priest, writing notes on a book he was reading. He looked up at Evelyn, and the two of them stared at each other for a moment before Evelyn spoke. "I'm sorry, I was told to find priest Thomas, are you him?" Evelyn asked, slightly nervous.
"I am indeed. And who might you be?" Thomas answered with a gravely voice. Only then did Evelyn realize it might have been polite to knock.
"Oh, I'm Evelyn... just Evelyn. I was told to come here by the cleric at the entrance." The priest gave her an affirmative nod, wanting Evelyn to continue. "And I came here because I think I found an evil spirit a mile from here next to a road." She gently placed the dead bird and the needle on the desk, "I found the crow dead on a pile of food, it was killed with the needle in its eye. I went to pick it up, and I too got shot with a needle. It's hollow, and easily drew my blood out. If it spreads to the road, many might get killed by it."
Thomas was silent for a few seconds before he said anything. "That is indeed concerning, but it's nothing you need to worry about. I know a few brilliant mana users working through the helpers guild. I can hire them, and we can get rid of the spirit before it kills anyone. But we will need you to show the way, so please follow me." The priest said before he stood up, and walked out of the room. Evelyn followed a moment later.
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Three people had entered my space, and I wasn't sure what to do. They must have seen my amazing pedestal, but instead of grabbing either of the two cubes resting on it, they simply walked near the middle of my space, and sat down. The longer they just stayed there, the more curious I became, and soon enough I decided to violate their privacy. I focused my attention on the three of them, and almost froze in surprise. They felt like what I expected people to feel like, essentially just big squirrels. But their magic was what caught me off guard.
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One of the three was nearly entirely drained from it, and the other two had hundreds, if not thousands of times the amount of magic than I expected. Both of the two had even more magic than I did, multiple times more infact. I salivated at the thought of stealing it from them, before I reminded myself that eating people wasn't nice. Being alone for years, with my only real goal being gaining more magic, couldn't possibly have been good for my mental health.
Then I noticed something odd about their magic, it wasn't flowing normally in their bodies. Every animal larger than a cockroach that I'd come across, had magic helping them live. It was inside their bodies, pushing blood through ther veins, supporting the skeleton and reinforing their muscles. I suspected that some animals could live without their hearts. But the two wells of magic were seemingly consciously pushing their magic out of their bodies, and out of my space, dragging small bits of my magic out with theirs. Then they would pull their magic back, without any of the outside magic, and I became smaller.
The two humans were stealing my magic faster than I could gain it, and if they continued, I would be reduced to the size of nothing. I wasn't sure what would happen to me were that my fate, but I was pretty sure they were trying to kill me, and I couldn't let it stand. Once was enough for two lifetimes. In a quick act of self defense, I tried forming large needles to shoot at the two killers, but the larger of the two men or women, I wasn't entirely sure which, swatted the half formed needles from my space with their magic. The two looked at each other, and then turned towards the third person. I could feel the air tickle, as the third stepped outside of my rapidly shrinking space. The were speaking, they had to be. And I could feel the sounds as the waves in air they really were.
Panicking, as I realized I might not be able to outright kill the two, I tried to mimic their speech. I hoped that If they heard words coming from nowhere, then maybe they would get frightened away. Instead, they just looked at each other again, saying something, and redoubled their efforts in killing me. I tried making other noises after that, even what I intended to be music, but they were unfazed.
I was running out of ideas on what to try, and already I had shrunk by a quarter of my previous size. I tried making multiple needles, throwing dirt and stones around, squeezing them with my magic, and through my desperation, I came up with an idea. I split my focus to a trillion trillion seperate oxygen atoms, and tore them apart. The two people tried to prevent what I had just done with my magic, but I don't think they even understood what I'd done. They only prevented me from turning oxygen to nitrogen where their magic already was, but I did it too late. They could probably kill me before they'd faint from the lack of oxygen.
The first insects stopped moving and died only seconds after. Then came the small animals. It was when a small hare fell over in front of my to be killers, they became distracted enough to stop their assault. I decided to take advantage of their distraction, and threw a large chunk of earth at them faster than the speed of sound. The two of them had been without oxygen for a bit over 20 seconds, and their minds were sluggish and distracted. Before they had stopped everything I tried to do before I could even properly gather my magic. This time though, they couldn't even react before their bodies were decimated.
I had killed them, I was safe, and then I felt like I had died all over again as I grew bigger. All the magic they had had, was now mine. My senses expanded, my area grew, my thoughts became split on pieces as I became fifty times wider in an instant, 125 thousand times the volume, and information in my mind in a fraction of a second. I forced everything in my space, my domain, to stay absolutely still in an effort to calm down my raging mind.
I could feel thousands of animals, I could sense what had to be a small village, and what might have been the first person to ever come across me, fight against my magic, keeping on breathing in efforts to stay alive. Only a few people, like the human with almost no magic, seemed to be able to continue relatively normally.
Finally my mind caught up with my body, and I could relax my hold on almost everything in my domain. I felt exhausted, but that exhaustion was quickly washed away by panic , as I realized I had just killed two people. Two breathing living maybe speaking people, and I wanted to do it again. I wanted to know how much bigger I could grow, I wanted to protect myself from being ever killed again, and I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if I ever grew to be the size of the planet I was on. But at the same time, I felt like I was becoming a monster. After all, what else could I be, when I genuinely wanted to kill a bunch of people.
There were no doubt going to be more people, more capable magicians than the ones I had just killed, who would do the same to me. But at the same time I wanted them to try, so that I could take their magic and grow. Then again, killing everyone I met would just cause nobody to come visit anymore, which would stunt my growth. Just like with my animals, I would have to bait the humans here. The magicians didn't seem to care about the possible gold cubes, so I didn't think treasure would work in attracting humans to a possible death. Maybe magic itself could be an attractive bait, I could let people get some magic, while killing a few. Unfortunately, I couldn't know how many humans were even interested in magic, or magic users there were. I might have just killed the two most magic dense humans on the planet for all I knew. Getting more of these immense size boosts might not even be possible, unless I somehow made humans to want to become more dense with magic, outside of my space.
A minute of thinking later, I got an idea. It would be my first proper long term project in this life. It might take years or even decades to fully realize, but it had potential. I couldn't wait to start working on it, so I didn't.